The building blocks of understanding are memorization and repetition

Re:The building blocks of understanding are memorization and... by sevenless on Thursday September 15, 2016 @04:12PM (#12509435)

How do you learn quantum field theory? I took a tiny amount of QM in school - basically, solving the Schrodinger equation for a few simple systems. What's the next step?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The building blocks of understanding are memorization and... by noobermin on Thursday September 15, 2016 @04:24PM (#12509519)

I read Shrednicki[0]'s book, a pre-print is freely available online (or was 4 or so years ago). A class in Grad school solidified it for me, specifically because they related it back to physics, like the standard model.

If you're going to start learning QFT, I suggest you try to understand time-dependent perturbation theory as much as possible. Also, be sure you have a handle on special relativity and scattering theory. QFT that most people use is really those things combined.

[0] http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/ms-qft-DRAFT.pdf

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The building blocks of understanding are memorization and... by JadeNB on Friday September 16, 2016 @10:10AM (#12514098)

For what it's worth, that PDF says "Please DO NOT DISTRIBUTE this document. Instead, link to http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/∼mark/qft.html " (which has a link to the PDF).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The building blocks of understanding are memorization and... by noobermin on Friday September 16, 2016 @04:29PM (#12517103)

Fair enough. Unfortunately, I can't edit the comment now.

[ Parent | on HN ]